Raise Your Game: Kick It Out’s initiative helping women explore careers in football

By Tom Simmonds

Kick It Out’s second Women’s Raise Your Game (RYG) conference was held at Upton Park on 28 October this year. This followed the inaugural RYG, held at Wembley on April 16 this year, and gave women working in or aspiring to work in football the chance to benefit from the expertise of successful females working in the game.

Troy Townsend, Kick It Out’s Education and Development Manager, said that a conference aimed at female participants was a necessary step as a series of regional RYG events in 2012 had only a 9% female attendance rate. The day saw much candid discussion of prejudices facing women in football, led by those who have successfully come through it.

In her keynote speech to RYG, Kelly Simmons, the FA’s Director of the National Game and Women’s Football, spoke of the lack of female reference points for her when she was building her career. Simmons said; “there was a real lack of female role models in the industry. I had to look outside the game”. Simmons’ contended that things were now better on this score, citing Heather Rabbatts, chair of the FA’s Inclusion Advisory Board, and Sunderland’s CEO Margaret Byrne as two examples.

The issue of the ongoing under-representation of women in sports media was raised by Shelley Alexander, the BBC’s editorial lead on women’s sport. Addressing RYG, Alexander shared her view that, she still feels “as a girl, you almost have to prove yourself more”, illustrating this with an anecdote about her appointment as programme editor of Football Focus. Recounting a conversation she had with Garth Crooks after her success, when Alexander told him of her shock that a woman had been given such a job, Crooks’ response was “You’re not as shocked as I am!”

Alexander was accompanied on stage by Alex Webb, a football reporter at BBC Sport who wove her experiences of the challenges she had faced in with Alexander’s longer history. Webb shared an episode where she cut a synopsis of a Liverpool v Manchester United match. A senior broadcaster Webb was working with on this told her more than once “we need this now” as on-air deadlines approached. Webb through discomfort, held steadfast to her standards, delivering a firm but polite statement to her senior colleague, telling him “I want this to be the best it can be”. Webb felt this was vindicated by the quality of her finished product.

Male hostility towards women in football was also a hot topic. Alexander used her speech to remind the audience that, while advances had been made, the battle for acceptance was not yet won. Alexander uses Arsene Wenger’s sour reaction (which a number of internet ‘trolls’ ran with) to Jacqui Oatley’s reasonable line of questioning about his failure to sign top class defenders as an example.

This reminds Alexander of hostile male reaction to Oatley’s Match of the Day commentary debut in 2007. Alexander feels naysayers aggressively “went after Jacqui because she was good”. This prompted Alexander to co-found Women in Football shortly afterwards. Simmons also addressed this issue, playing up the marginal nature of those who trolled her, saying these individuals espoused their ignorance “to their 15 followers”.

Freelance journalist and Offside Rule (We Get It!) blogger Rebecca Coles has a more positive story to tell on this, though she is mindful of the increased hostility a higher profile can bring; “luckily, I’ve not had anything really awful, but the more followers you get, the more chance there is [of encountering aggression]”.

Simmons says the growth of the new Women’s Super League, which saw a rise in average attendance to 728 in 2014, will be key to promoting further absorption of women into football’s fabric. Speaking to The Offside Rule (We Get It!), Simmons told of what she thought needed to happen to ensure that WSL builds on its breakthrough season, and how they are going about this:

“We need to convert interest into regular attendance, and to keep building that fanbase… We’re investing in supporting clubs and making sure that clubs use their communications channels to support their women’s teams”.

On the wider issue of ensuring that women get, and stay, involved in sport, Simmons says that good quality PE from primary school onward” was the most important factor in redressing the two million deficit between male and female participants in sport in the UK at present.

Simmons was speaking two days before the launch of Sport England’s ‘This Girl Can’ campaign, a £10 million investment which aims to engage more women and girls in sport. This initiative, seen alongside the mentoring opportunities that RYG afforded its participants, demonstrates that there is now a strong unity of purpose behind the further integration of women into sport, which can only augur well for Simmons’ forecast of ”a bright future for women in our industry”.

Were you at the Raise Your Game conference in October? What did you take away from it?

For more on Kick It Out and their work, visit www.kickitout.org

Read more from Tom Simmonds here.

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